[callum9999]

(Original post by Hopple)
What would you suggest? I'd be happy with £20k provided our government had the ability to recoup that money.

Fair enough.

I'd suggest keeping it as it is. EU students are to be treated as equals (more or less - I think there may be a few exceptions) by their host governments. Though I would change the conditions - i.e. anyone who doesn't pay the right payments can be taken to court (if they can't already? For British and other EU students) for the money. Perhaps even look into making it a criminal offence as opposed to a civil offence and include the debt on credit files across the EU (not necessarily the amount, but detail missed payments and defaults etc.).

[Fires]

(Original post by callum9999)
Fair enough.

I'd suggest keeping it as it is. EU students are to be treated as equals (more or less - I think there may be a few exceptions) by their host governments. Though I would change the conditions - i.e. anyone who doesn't pay the right payments can be taken to court (if they can't already? For British and other EU students) for the money. Perhaps even look into making it a criminal offence as opposed to a civil offence and include the debt on credit files across the EU (not necessarily the amount, but detail missed payments and defaults etc.).

The problem is (as with other types of civil enforcement) that EU country authorities find it hard or impossible to enforce debts in other EU countries.

This has to stop since basically we are adding to our UK debt mountain to finance EU students.

[callum9999]

(Original post by Fires)
The problem is (as with other types of civil enforcement) that EU country authorities find it hard or impossible to enforce debts in other EU countries.

This has to stop since basically we are adding to our UK debt mountain to finance EU students.

Have the people advocating for this done any financial analysis of this though? When the other EU countries inevitably reciprocate and refuse to fund British students, what is the increased cost going to be for the tax payer as thousands return to the UK and start taking out £10-15k loans per year?

What you need to remember is the UK government are charging students directly for their education, whereas most EU governments are charging the taxpayer. As such, an unpaid £9k tuition fee loan in the UK is roughly equivalent to other EU governments cutting out the middleman and paying the university directly on your behalf. You could therefore argue that the UK is getting a better deal from this than the rest of the EU.

I personally think it's a big fuss about nothing, symbolism over substance.